HEROIN DEATHS IN PLANO ARE DOWN, BUT IS IT OUT?

After a year in the clear, police wonder what's the next fix

PLANO - Lawrence Preston ticks off the names of the Plano young people he
knew who overdosed on heroin and died.

"Mondo, Erin, Natacha," said Lawrence, who asked that his real name not be
used.

They were kids he went to school with in the All-America City. Their deaths
came early in what became a wave of fatal teen heroin overdoses that rocked
Plano between 1996 and 1998. There were nearly 20 in all. And just as the
teen heroin crisis seemed to have passed, a former Dallas Cowboy, Plano
resident Mark Tuinei, overdosed and died.

It's been a year since a fatal heroin overdose has been reported in Plano,
and while the city is still dealing with drug abuse, a number of factors
have combined to reduce the threat from that opiate.

"I think there's a very common misperception that Plano continues to be the
epicenter of heroin use," said Dr. Jeffrey Goodloe, the Plano Fire
Department's medical director and an emergency-room physician at the
Medical Center of Plano. "But you'd have to be brain-dead to deal heroin in
Plano. With the media attention on this and the law enforcement on this,
you'd do much better to go to another community that hasn't put its focus
on this problem."

News coverage and aggressive law enforcement are just two of the factors
cited by police and drug counselors, who also credit better emergency
treatment of overdose victims. Some of the reasons for the decline in
fatalities are not so encouraging, such as the more cautious use of heroin
and the increasingly popularity of other drugs.

Five years ago, Plano police wouldn't even investigate overdoses. Drug-use
fatalities were treated as suicides. A policy shift changed that.

The Plano Police Department bolstered its narcotics unit from three to 16
people and gained a regional reputation for aggressively ferreting out
drugs and prosecuting major dealers. It now tracks all illicit overdoses.

When fatalities occur, Plano police said they immediately look for "trace"
evidence - a syringe, a spoon, pills and other telltale signs of drug use.

"We try to identify the supplier within 24 hours," Assistant Police Chief
Steve Nagy said. "They're on the crime scene within an hour," he said of
detectives.

"That shows the importance we put on this offense. We don't want people
killing themselves. ... Human life is the priority," he said.

Detective Terence Holway, one of two officers in the narcotics unit
assigned to investigate overdose fatalities, said the goal is to get users
into the system, whether it's the criminal justice system or drug
rehabilitation, "whatever it takes."

Critics of the police department's strategy said drug users need affordable
and effective treatment, not jail time and the stigma from society that it
brings.

Although no long-term, residential drug treatment centers exist in Collin
County, a few small outpatient treatment facilities have popped up in Plano
in recent years.

In 1999, West Texas Counseling and Rehabilitation of Plano, the only
methadone clinic in Collin County, opened. It's grown from 20 to about 75
patients who head to the clinic each morning for their little white
methadone tablet. Accountants, plumbers, students, homemakers, store
supervisors and construction workers are among the recovering addicts.
There's a waiting list to get in.

The department's tough stand may even be diverting overdose cases from
Plano hospitals.

"People know that we have a no-tolerance policy, so a lot of them don't
want to go to Plano hospitals," Detective Holway said. "They'll have their
buddies drop them in [Dallas County]. They know if they go to Plano they
may get criminally filed on."

Police said addicts are simply becoming more savvy in other ways - more
aware of the drug's greater potency and, perhaps, better able to gauge its
effects.

"They're smarter," Detective Holway said. "They know how to do their dope."

And when problems do occur, instead of waiting until their friends stop
breathing and then dropping their bodies off at the emergency room door as
some once did, Detective Holway said some heroin users now know about
dialing 911 for help.

Police said most addicts know now that Plano paramedics carry life- saving
Naloxone, most commonly known by its trade name Narcan.

"It's given to heroin overdoses to bring them back," said Monique Cardwell,
a Plano Fire Department spokeswoman. "They get so relaxed they quit
breathing. ... It [the Narcan] reverses the effect of the narcotic instantly."

But Narcan alone, Dr. Goodloe warned, "gives a false sense of security.
Please don't make the assumption that you can take anything on the street
and we have the technology to instantly cure you."

He pointed to the deadly mixture of contaminated heroin and cocaine that
killed 16 people in Houston in August.

In Plano, Detective Holway said: "When someone overdoses, they either A,
mix their drugs, or B, they go back to the same dosage they were using
[before they stopped for several months or years]. Their body has detoxed,
it's not used to that level anymore.

"The only people who are going to die," the detective said, "are either by
themselves or they go to sleep and no one checks on them. And that really
hasn't happened in awhile."

Nonetheless, the loss of those who have died is still being felt.

JoAnn and Clint Scofield, whose 25-year-old son, Andrew, died from a heroin
and cocaine overdose in Austin, said some people aren't very empathetic.

"There are those who back off and look at you like a pariah," Ms. Scofield,
a McKinney resident, said at a recent meeting of a support group for
parents of children who died from addiction.

"They say, 'My kid would never do something like that.' ... Well, I did
everything I could - we both did - for our son; and I'm not going to hide it."

Danielle Haran, 28, of Plano who has lost four friends to heroin, can relate.

"The people I knew, they're not around anymore" Ms. Haran said. "They're dead."

Now her sister, a heroin addict, is behind bars in McKinney, waiting to be
transferred to a state prison for failing a drug test while in a halfway house.

"I just wish she would stop using," Ms. Haran said of her sibling. "I just
wish she'd realize it's like playing Russian roulette. You know, one day
she can do the wrong dosage and might not wake up, like the rest of the
people I know."

Ms. Haran, who has a fear of needles, said she's an advocate for friends
who are trying hard to kick the habit.

"Hopefully," she said, "this will be something of the past soon, you know."

The future has its dangers, too. Heroin is still out there, Detective
Holway said, but "more people are overdosing on methamphetamines than
anything else."

Others fear this may be the quiet before the storm, before the next new
killer wave hits.

Efforts continue to warn young people. A group called Students Taking
Action Not Drugs will host a March 1 citywide youth leadership conference
in Plano.

"Our focus is to get those people who do use drugs to desire a different
lifestyle as opposed to taking action against them," said Lei Liew, 17,
president of the STAND chapter at Plano Senior High School. "We're trying
to encourage them to change the activities they're involved in."

But for some, only the fear of incarceration keeps them alive.

Twenty-one-year-old Lawrence said he thought about the deaths of his
friends "for a day. ... It didn't make me quit drugs, no."

Daily methadone treatment at a Plano clinic killed his craving for heroin,
he said, and a healthy fear of prison keeps him clean.

"I'm on probation and can't do drugs," said Lawrence, who was arrested on a
possession charge in his Plano home early last year.

"I don't want to go to jail."

Staff writer Manolo Barco contributed to this report.